


The Messenger

by St_Salieri



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst, Gen, Season/Series 03
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-11-18
Updated: 2007-11-18
Packaged: 2017-11-25 09:52:33
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,627
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/637647
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/St_Salieri/pseuds/St_Salieri
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The end result of Sam's nightmares. Post-<i>Bedtime Stories</i>.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Messenger

**Author's Note:**

> Please note the archive warnings.

 

The nightmares began not long after his encounter with the Crossroads Demon. Sam dreamed of a woman he'd never seen before, a tall woman with dark hair and blood red lips. Sometimes she appeared on the ceiling above his head, and he would watch, paralyzed, as she screamed in agony before bursting into flames. Sometimes she came to him at the meeting of roads, and after he shot her in the head it would be Dean's body lying dead on the ground.

After each dream Sam would wake up in a cold sweat, unable to go back to sleep.

As the days passed, the nightmares became more frequent, until sometimes he wasn't sure whether he was awake or still asleep. One day he sat in the passenger seat while Dean drove and fiddled with the radio. Sam idly glanced behind him, looking for his jacket, and almost yelled aloud when he found the woman sitting in the rear seat. She smiled at him and laid a finger to her lips.

"It's not time yet," she whispered, and Sam woke up with a start. His head was against the window, his neck stiff. Dean was still playing around with the radio, and there was no one in the back seat of the car.

"Did you...?" Sam started to ask, then shook his head at Dean's curious look. "Nothing."

Dean frowned. "Dude, you've been weird for a week now. Are you okay?"

"I'm fine," Sam snapped, pinching the bridge of his nose and trying to ward off the blooming headache.

He felt a strange reluctance to tell Dean about the dreams. He told himself that it was because he hadn't yet admitted to Dean that he'd gone to confront the Crossroads Demon, and he knew that all of Dean's questions would eventually lead back there. And so he told himself that that's all it was, and that eventually the whole thing would work its way out of his system. Another voice whispered in his ear, telling him that he couldn't let Dean find out that he was having _those_ kinds of dreams again. Not yet.

"Oh, I already know," Dean said to him that night, walking over to sit on Sam's bed.

"You do?" Sam asked. Dean nodded.

"Sure. I know everything about you. And it makes you crazy, doesn't it? Won't you be happy when I'm gone?"

"What? No!" Sam said fiercely, then gasped in shock when Dean raised a large machete.

"Sorry," Dean said apologetically. "I promised Dad."

The machete sliced through the air with a whistling noise, and Sam awoke just before the blade bit into his flesh. He lay trembling in the quiet room, listening to the sound of the real Dean snoring softly from the other bed.

Another long day passed, and then the mysterious woman came to him again the next night as he lay in his motel bed and the clock ticked over from one day to the next.

"Almost time," she said, leaning over Sam's bed to kiss him on the forehead. When she straightened up, it was Dean standing over him.

"This is a dream," Sam muttered, closing his eyes and willing himself to wake up. "This is just a dream."

"Maybe," Dean said with a shrug. "Or maybe not. You don't know how long I've waited for this, Sam. Thousands of years of waiting, all for this moment."

Sam shivered and reached for the knife he'd left on the bedside table. "You're not Dean. This isn't real."

Not-Dean eyed the knife skeptically. "You really think you can use that on me?"

"My dream, my rules," Sam said. The temperature in the room had dropped precipitously, and he began to shiver. He raised the knife. "Now go away."

Not-Dean laughed. "Oh, I don't think so. You belong to us, Sam. I've just come to collect what's mine.

The bed dipped, and he looked over to see the dark-haired woman sit down next to him. He tried to raise the knife but his arm felt frozen, and he could do nothing more than groan as she pushed him inexorably onto his back. She smiled at him, leaning forward to whisper directly into his ear.

"I look forward to serving you."

Suddenly his arm was free, and Sam struck upwards viciously. The woman disappeared, but he could feel other hands holding him down and shaking him. Someone was calling his name. He swung the knife in a wide arc, smiling fiercely in satisfaction when he felt the blade catch on the dull resistance of a body.

And then suddenly Sam was horribly, frighteningly wide awake, and Dean - the real Dean - was lying on the dirty motel carpet with blood gushing from a long, ragged cut that started at his left ear and wound its way around his throat to his right shoulder.

"Oh God," Sam breathed, dropping to his knees. Blood dripped from the knife in his hand, and how was it that he was holding a knife? He couldn't remember. He dropped it, and it clattered to the ground with a dull thud.

Dean's hands fluttered around his wounded throat. He brushed his fingers against his neck and stared uncomprehendingly at the blood on them.

"Sammy?" he croaked. "Why did you...?"

"Dean!"

His hands numb and shaking, Sam grabbed a t-shirt from the tangle of clean clothes stuffed into one of the duffel bags. He pressed it gently to Dean's throat and watched as flowers of blood blossomed on the white cotton.

"Shit," he cursed, watching the blood drain through his fingers. He pressed harder, then eased up slightly as Dean began to choke.

Dean was studying him with a puzzled expression, seemingly oblivious to the fact that he was lying on the floor of their motel room with an opened throat.

"You did this," he said with an almost childlike curiosity. Sam flinched and closed his eyes against the accusation.

"Dean," he said mournfully. "I didn't mean...God, I'm so...." He choked, unable to continue.

Once, when he was eight years old and they were on the road to nowhere in particular, a dog had run in front of their car, too late for them to stop. He could remember the thump of the wheels against its body, and the way his dad swore and jerked the steering wheel to the side, pulling off the deserted road. Sam had thrown the door open and taken off at a run, heedless of his father's shout. The dog had been lying by the side of the road. Even though two of its legs were obviously broken, it had tried its best to scramble to its feet as Sam carefully approached. He had held out his hand to it as it whimpered pitifully.

He remembered his dad checking for a collar before stepping back and shaking his head. He'd whispered something quietly to Dean, then started digging in the trunk. Dean had taken Sam around to the front of the car, grabbing his arm and holding on when Sam had tied to bolt at sound of the single gunshot.

"Hey," Dean had said to him, gruffly but not unkindly. "It's better this way. You don't want it to suffer, do you?"

Sam had peeked around the car and watched his father move the dog's body off the road and cover it with branches before replacing the shotgun in the trunk. He'd wanted to ask Dean if he was really telling him the truth - that the dog wasn't suffering anymore - but he couldn't. That night he'd dreamed about the way the dog had looked at him with those dumb, suffering eyes, and no matter what Dean had said, Sam couldn't bring himself to believe that he hadn't failed the animal somehow.

His fingers were starting to go numb where they were clamped around Dean's neck, and he could hear himself breathing in short, shaky sobs. He looked wildly around the room for his phone, having absolutely no idea where it was and knowing that he wouldn't dare let go of Dean to go grab it anyway. Dean was looking at him with that same wide-eyed incomprehension he'd seen from the dog right before it died. It was the look of a creature face to face with its own mortality.

"Dean, hang on," Sam ordered, his throat clogged with tears. He risked taking a hand away from where he held the shirt to Dean's neck and grabbed one of Dean's hands. "Do you hear me? I told you to hang on!"

Dean blinked up at him, eyes wide in his pale face. He gave a choking cough, and blood trickled from the corner of his mouth. His eyes flickered briefly around the room, as if checking for something Sam couldn't see, before they focused on Sam's face again. He gave Sam's hand a squeeze and tried to speak, but the blood was choking him.

"I'm sorry. I'm so sorry," Sam sobbed. He was suddenly aware that he'd been saying it over and over, a mournful, unending _mea culpa_. Dean blinked at him again and mumbled something, just a quiet whisper of breath. Sam lowered his head to listen, trying to bring his breathing under control.

"I know," Dean choked. "I know. Don't, Sam."

"What?" Sam shook Dean lightly as his attention started to drift. "Dean, don't what?"

Dean took a gasping breath and reached up for Sam, grabbing onto his neck with surprising strength.

"Sammy...don't bring me back."

Dean took one last rattling breath, and then he was gone.

Sam didn't know how long he sat there unmoving and unfeeling, his brother's blood drying on his hands. At one point he must have moved Dean's head onto his lap, because he found himself running his hand through Dean's hair and humming something tuneless under his breath that might have been a lullaby.

"Well, isn't this touching?" a soft voice asked.

The woman with the dark hair was back, her lips redder than the blood on Dean's torn throat. Sam watched dully as she crossed the room to crouch in front of them, her hand lightly tracing the air above Dean's face without touching him.

"It's better this way," she said, a nasty smile quirking the corner of her lips. "He was suffering, you know."

Sam felt his right hand ball into a fist, but it was an involuntary gesture. His anger was dull and far away, hidden somewhere behind layers of disbelief and under the weight of his brother's dead body.

"You," he whispered. The woman laughed, a silvery tinkle that sent chills up his spine.

"Me," she confirmed. As Sam watched, her body shifted, her features melting and rearranging until he was looking at his brother's face. Sam shut his eyes with a whimper and leaned his head down against the body in his arms.

"He was holding you back," Dean's voice said. "He did his job looking after you, but that's over now. We couldn't have you waste your time looking after _him_ , could we? You're better than that."

When Sam raised his head, the woman was in her own form again. She strolled across the room with the delicacy and precision of a cat, her feet never making a sound on the carpeted floor.

"I'm going to kill you," Sam said calmly. It wasn't a warning, or even a threat. It was simply the truth, and it was all he had the energy to speak. The woman laughed again.

"Darling boy," she said fondly. "I would love to see you try it." She spread her arms, and at the gesture the temperature in the room seemed to drop ten degrees. Her voice lowered in pitch, and her words were rimmed with ice. "I am no common demon that you can dispatch with some herbs and a little Latin, you know. Have some respect for me."

Sam closed his eyes briefly against the pain in his head. When he opened them, he spotted a glint of metal half hidden under the bloody shirt he'd used to try to stanch the bleeding. It was the Colt. With numb fingers, he snatched it up, cocked the hammer and pointed it at the woman.

"Respect this," he ground out.

To his dismay, the woman merely smiled. "Try it," she suggested with a shrug. "Waste all of your bullets." Walking over to a chair, she reached out and ran her hand over the back. Her fingers disappeared into the chair without a trace, and when she pulled them back out there was no sign of her passing. With another smile, she turned back to Sam. "I'm afraid your weapons are useless against me, including your precious gun."

Sam frowned, and his hand wavered. "You're a ghost?"

"Oh, I'm so much more," the woman breathed. "But at the moment, I'm merely a messenger." She quirked an eyebrow, her eyes alight with a sly humor. "If it makes you more comfortable, you can call me Gabriel."

The gun shook in his hand, but he didn't lower it. "What do you want?"

She laughed. "Now we get right down to it. You have a destiny, Sam. I'm just here to get you started on the right road."

He clenched his teeth. "You killed my brother."

She shook her head sadly, giving him a pitying look. "No. _You_ killed your brother, and you know it. I was just a...distraction. An illusion. It was the last step, the thing you needed to free you from the ties of blood that hold you back from being the person you were always meant to be. Your army awaits you."

Sam's eyes widened, and he shook his head. "No," he said firmly. "I'm not...that's not me. It's all over now."

"Oh no," the woman said softly. "It's just beginning. You _know_ this, Sam. Deep down, you've always known who you really are. And now that you're alone, you're finally ready. The battle will begin soon, and you have a job to do."

He could feel a scream clawing at his throat, and he swallowed hard, forcing it down. "You mind telling me what this job is?"

"All in good time," she said. She glanced at the gun in Sam's hand. "You may not be able to use that on me, but there are plenty of other creatures you can use it on. You will have more power than you can imagine. And who knows? Maybe one day you'll even have the power to bring back something you've lost." She let her gaze rest on Dean's body for a moment, then extended her hand, her gesture imperious. "Come with me, Sam. It's time."

Sam stared at her a long moment. For the first time since this whole nightmare had begun, his mind was clear.

"Yes," he murmured. "You're right. I know what I have to do."

With a last look at the Colt, he slowly lowered the barrel...then turned it around and pressed it against his own throat. The woman hissed and stepped forward.

"You little fool. What are you doing?"

Sam ignored her and looked down at the body he held cradled in his left arm. "I'm sorry," he whispered again.

He turned his wrist, and the long barrel slid along his throat until the muzzle pointed upward at the soft skin just behind the hard point of his chin. He swallowed hard and felt the cold metal dig into his flesh. His hand never wavered and the Colt held steady - the Colt that was guaranteed to kill anything, no matter how evil. Surely it would do its job on him. As the woman howled in impotent rage, he closed his eyes, tightened his grip on Dean and pulled the trigger.

 


End file.
